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<h1 align="center"><span class="pagetitle">Why The Site?</span><br>
<font size=2>= <span class="sitetitle">Index DOT Html</span> by 
<a href="email.htm">Brian Wilson</a> =</font></h1>

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     <td align=left>Index DOT Html: <font size=2>
     <a href="../html/index.html">Main Index</a> | <a href="../html/tree/htmltree.htm">Element Tree</a> |
     <a href="../html/tagindex/a.htm">Element Index</a> | <a href="../html/supportkey/a.htm">HTML Support
     History</a></font><br>
     Index DOT Css: <font size=2><a href="../css/index.html">Main Index</a> |
     <a href="../css/propindex/font.htm">Property Index</a> |
     <a href="../css/supportkey/syntax.htm">CSS Support History</a> |
     <a href="../history/browsers.htm">Browser History</a></font></td>
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<ul>
<li><a href="#beginnning">In The Beginning...: The Concept</a>
<li><a href="#taghist">Getting in Deeper Water: HTML Support History</a>
<li><a href="#prerel">Intermediate Steps: Pre-release Versions are Important Too</a>
<li><a href="#htmlhist">While We're At It: HTML History</a>
<li><a href="#indexcss">A "Small" Sub-topic-Expands: Index DOT Css</a>
<li><a href="#wrapup">To Wrap Up</a>
</ul>

<a name="beginnning"></a>
<big><b class="mainheading">In The Beginning...: The Concept</b></big>
<hr width="30%" align=left>
The concept for this site came together during the course of many months at
work when I needed to access the many different and sometimes hard to find
references on the versions and extensions to HTML. I ended up with many
references, both hard copy and electronic, with links to different
sites that would help in my quest as well. Sometimes these references
disagreed with each other, while some simply did not have accurate
information. There were other times when I wanted a good tutorial on
<em>PROPER</em> usage of an element or attribute created by a browser
company, and the references were either very poor or non-existent. Thinking
that I wasn't alone, I started compiling information on the elements and
attributes of the HTML language. Even at that stage in the history of HTML,
it took longer than I ever expected, to say the least. =)
<br><br>

<a name="taghist"></a>
<big><b class="mainheading">Getting in Deeper Water: HTML Support History</b></big>
<hr width="30%" align=left>
As I neared the completion of this information gathering phase, I
noticed a significant gap in one other area; people on USENET were
constantly asking for some sort of comparison about which elements and
attributes were supported by which browsers. No one seemed to have created
a satisfactory response to this need. Around this time I had also come
upon Stephen LeHunte's HTML Reference Library, which was an <em>EXCELLENT</em> 
reference in its day (it has not been updated in quite some time), and found 
something very close to what I and others had been seeking. I then planned on 
incorporating something like this to my own site, but I decided to expand the 
concept because of a still unaddressed need on this subject.
<br><br>

The problem: browser hit statistics for any site will show that a vast
majority of users accessing pages are using browsers such as Internet
Explorer or Netscape. What such logs also plainly show is that a significant
number of users are not using or upgrading to the latest versions of these
browsers. Browser capability and HTML support has evolved rapidly over the
last few years, but authors are often quick to forget the more limited
capabilities of an older browser version (such as those pre-dating tables,
frames or CSS support.)
<br><br>

I looked around on the web and in books on the subject and could find
<em>NO</em> exhaustive or organized history of HTML element/attribute
support. The task of manually verifying all this on the scale I intended
did not sound, nor was it, easy.
<br><br>

<a name="prerel"></a>
<big><b class="mainheading">Intermediate Steps: Pre-release Versions Are Important Too</b></big>
<hr width="30%" align=left>

As I examined the issue, it became apparent that detailing support in
final release versions wasn't going to be enough. Information for public,
pre-release versions (alphas and betas, or whatever they are calling
them now =) would also be of some interest in light of the time involved.
Early browsers often had fairly brief product cycles, but as the software
has become more complex, these cycles have become longer and longer. The
NCSA Mosaic version 2.0 cycle lasted almost two years, while recent Internet
Explorer and Netscape cycles have lasted as long as six months with up
to a year between final releases of major versions.
<br><br>

Verifying support history has not been easy - I have had to locate
dozens of incremental browser versions to manually verify much of the
information here. Now I can see why approaching this problem in this
manner has not been done before. =)
<br><br>

<a name="htmlhist"></a>
<big><b class="mainheading">While We're At It: HTML History</b></big>
<hr width="30%" align=left>
In the process of doing this, it occurred to me that very little
general documented history exists about both browsers <em>AND</em> the
HTML specifications of old. Once a new version is released, the old
stuff is generally forgotten or ignored. I realize that the time span
I cover (about 8 years worth) is short, but already the details are
disappearing into the mist. Even as recently as mid-1996, when I
started compiling this information, many of the documents relating
to early HTML history were inaccessible to my searching due to
deletion, broken links, or incompatible document formats (this has
thankfully been corrected. Yay!)
<br><br>

<a name="indexcss"></a>
<big><b class="mainheading">A "Small" Sub-topic-Expands: Index DOT Css</b></big>
<hr width="30%" align=left>
The Index DOT Css site started as an addition to the Index DOT Html site in
1996 when I was doing some research on an emerging standard used in Internet
Explorer 3 called (interestingly enough) Cascading Style Sheets. The standard
was just developing and it seemed appropriate to document it, given that CSS
was paired so well with HTML.
<br><br>

The little resource I created was one of the first on the subject outside the
W3C, but it had since fallen behind. Since the CSS portion of Index DOT Html
was created, CSS2 was also introduced, and then recommended by the W3C, and
all the major browsers now support the language to greater and lesser degrees.
I had been meaning to expand and update that portion of the site for a while,
but I knew the task would be daunting. So, after finally finishing many
long-standing 'to-do' items on the site, I turned my attention to CSS again.
<br><br>

With several lengthy standards in use or under proposal and a growing history of
implementation in the browsers, I decided that the subject deserved its own "site"
that is semantically separate from Index DOT Html. HTML and CSS are very closely
tied together and will remain so, but in the interest of reducing complexity for
the reader, these topics needed to be separated a bit.
<br><br>

<a name="wrapup"></a>
<big><b class="mainheading">To Wrap Up</b></big>
<hr width="30%" align=left>
What this means is that now there is still only one person to create, update,
and maintain TWO huge sites instead of "just" one. Wish me luck. =)<br>
Hopefully, someone will get use out of this, the resource <em>I</em> was looking
for before I set out to create these sites.
<br>
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<a href="copyright.htm">Boring Copyright Stuff...</a>
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